She and Jack had breakfasted together at Holyhead, where they remained until morning, and then he had seen her safely into the train to London. There had been tears in his sunny eyes, and Paddy had felt awful, but it had to be borne, and now he was on the sea sailing away—away from England and all of them. It did, indeed, seem as if all the hard things possible had come upon them at once, and when she at last slipped into bed, she cried herself to sleep.
The next day she went with her uncle to see about her dispensing and was fortunately able to start working at once, which left her less time to think.
Nevertheless, often across her studies would steal the memory of the mountains and loch. In fancy she would smell the heather or the peat, hear the curlews calling or the cry of the plover, the lapping of the little waves against the keel of the boat, or their light murmuring on the shingle; she would wonder what the aunties were doing, and how the hockey club was getting on with its new captain, and whether they all thought of her sometimes and missed her! One big tear would gather and then another, and she would dash them angrily away, fighting day by day with steady persistence the passionate longing, the sometimes passionate determination, to throw everything to the winds and go back and live on crusts, if need be, beside her beloved lake. Sometimes these fits left her very sore and irritable, and it was in such a mood she had her first real quarrel with Basil, about three weeks after her arrival. She hardly knew what it was all about, neither did he, but he started holding forth in his usual high fashion upon London and Londoners being the salt of the earth, with certain vague innuendoes about well-cut, tailor-made dresses and a smart style, until Paddy grew exasperated beyond endurance, and informed him, none too politely, that he was only fitted to stand in tailor’s window, as a model of an empty-headed, well-dressed, curled and pampered modern young man, with about as much real manhood in him as a wax doll.
Having delivered herself of this somewhat pointed speech, in a highly impressive fashion, she flung out of the room and slammed the door behind her in a way that shook the jerry-built Shepherd’s Bush villa to its very foundation. It shook his lordship, Basil Adair, gasping into a large arm-chair with open mouth and eyes, for the onslaught had very literally taken his breath away.
“By Jove,” he breathed, “I hope the roof’s securely fastened on. What in the name of fortune did the guv’nor bring this whirlwind—this tornado—this positive monsoon—into a suburban villa for?”
CHAPTER XXVII
Paddy has a Visitor.
When Paddy was alone in her room her anger quickly evaporated, and was as quickly replaced by an overpowering sense of loneliness. Why, oh why, had they let her come to London alone? Why had Fate dealt her this double blow! “Daddy, daddy,” she breathed piteously, and buried her face in her hands. For a moment she longed to be away there in the quiet churchyard beside him. It seemed to her quite impossible that life would ever be glad again, since he was gone, and Jack was gone, and strangers were probably already moving into The Ghan House.
But presently the mood passed and she was calmer, remembering all the responsibility on her shoulders.
“Don’t forget you’re an Irish Fusilier’s daughter, Paddy,” she admonished herself severely, “and you promised to be a good son. Irish Fusiliers’ daughters don’t cry like babies, just because everything seems to have gone wrong; and a good son is more sorry for his mother than himself.”